Atlas Sound

Bradford Cox likes to talk. Catch the Deerhunter and Atlas Sound frontman in a good mood, and he'll tell you about anything you want to hear-- very little is out of bounds. Part of what makes him so compelling is that his in-person gregariousness seems to stand at odds with his music, which is expressive and insular, and sometimes even disturbing.

Perhaps wanting to bridge the gap between his musical persona and his real-life one, Cox seems eager to connect with his audience and explain what his songs mean to him and how they came into being. Logos, his most recent album as Atlas Sound, provides a good opportunity for that because it marks some interesting changes in approach for Cox-- mainly a more collaborative approach to songwriting and a desire, it seems, to take his music outside the confines of his bedroom.

We caught up with Cox before he began his recent Atlas Sound tour, and just after a scary bout with pneumonia had left him bedridden for two weeks. The afternoon we talked was the first bit of contact he'd had in days-- and the first time he'd talked at length about Logos-- and he was feeling healthy, chipper, and ready to chat. About music and, well, anything else that crossed his mind.

Pitchfork: So Logos is quite different from your previous Atlas Sound album, Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel. How do you feel about that album now? Do you listen to it?

Bradford Cox: Oh, no. But I don't dislike it. I think some people are getting the idea that I don't like that album now. I've got this thing where I always kind of diss the older stuff and favor the newer stuff. I mean, it's not just my thing; every artist or musician is like that, I guess. Audiences tend to dig the earlier stuff by any given musician, and the artists themselves always tend to prefer the thing that they're doing now. You know, like Arto Lindsay from DNA. You listen to his newer stuff and you listen to DNA, and it's so different -- even just the production values and stuff. Talk to Arto Lindsay and I'm sure he's tired of people asking him about DNA; he's probably really into what he's doing now, which is good stuff. I guess I probably feel like that. But I'm obviously not comparing myself to someone as iconic as that.

Pitchfork: How often, if ever, do you listen to older Deerhunter or Atlas Sound stuff?

BC: Not for pleasure or, like, a nostalgic trip or anything like that. Only ever for a technical purpose. Like if you're on tour and somebody in the band wants to play an older song and you're like, "Oh, I gotta remember the words." Or the way the vocals are or how the guitar lick is.

Pitchfork:Logos feels less personal than the last record, which kind of dovetails with you taking a step back from the public spotlight. Is that connected at all?

BC: Yeah, but it's not as easy to define as that. Let the Blind also had songs that weren't about me. Like "River Card", that song has nothing to do with me.

I was trying to write a song based on a story in a random book of Puerto Rican short stories that I found in a thrift store. I thought it was really dark, and so I tried to interpret it. I've always been interested in writing from other people's perspectives and other gender perspectives. I mean, the press statement I made about Logos, which I made in a certain mood-- everybody just needs to realize that when you write something like that you're just in one mood. I was told I needed to write it and it was overdue; I don't even remember what day it was. So whatever I felt about the record at that exact moment is what I wrote in this real homey, man-to-man style. I totally think that this album is just as personal as the last one; I just think that for the last one I was in more of an emotionally heightened state and now I'm in a more balanced state, I guess.

Pitchfork: Right. I guess what I mean is that you've kind of taken a step back since the record leak and all that drama. Are you generally happier now that you're not in the public eye as much?

BC: I mean, I was only in the public eye because I was annoying. You know how neurotic people may ask for one thing when they may really want another thing? It was like I was asking for attention, but I didn't really want attention. Like with the whole record leaking thing, I just didn't approach it properly. What I really wanted to say was that musicians and artists are not... it's not like politicians or something where you can't really affect them. There's not like this separate caste system where it's like, "I'm the musician, you're the audience. Never the two shall meet." It was a case where it was like, "Hey, you know what? I'm on your level, man."

I'm gonna fucking tell you if you're pissing me off; I'm not talking down to you. It felt like I got pushed in this corner where I was the sensitive artist and there were all these "normal" people complaining about me bitching and stuff. I didn't really see it like that, but now I can see how it was interpreted that way. I see that I could have been more well-spoken about it, but I guess that's the bitter part of being young.

Pitchfork: I felt like you had a right to be upset about it. If only because you were giving away so much music at that point it must have felt like a slap in the face.

BC: Well, it was that and it was frustration with a certain aspect of Internet culture. Acting like people aren't really people; that they're characters that you can punch and talk about and make fun of. I'll be honest with you, one of the things that frustrated me the most out the record leak thing, it had nothing to do with record sales-- I mean, that's a joke. Has anybody looked at how many records anybody sells anymore? If you're not Jay-Z, a record leaking isn't going to affect you. It was just really personal.

The biggest thing that I remember from that whole scandal or whatever you want to fucking call it, fiasco, was that in my Mediafire folder-- which I've said a million times that I didn't realize was how the site worked and it was my own ineptness that lead to the whole thing-- that everything I'd ever uploaded was in there, there was a zip file called like "Kid pics" or something. It was for an article that somebody had written and they'd asked me to scan some childhood photos of my family and me to accompany their article. And people were looking at my childhood photos and stuff, you know? That's the kind of bizarre shit that I'm talking about.

The Internet nowadays is all sensationalism, and it's just terrifying when you're actually experiencing it as a person. It's one thing to read about it. Like you read about that Black Lips/Wavves fight as a spectator and you're like, "Oh man, I'm gonna pick a team to be on! I'm gonna put my two cents in as my status update on my Facebook page" or something. Not to sound like an anti-technology person, but it's just a real drag that people live their lives that way.

Pitchfork: So let's talk more about the new record. There's an almost straightforward folk-rock vibe to some of the songs.

BC: Yeah, well, let's start at the beginning of the album with "The Light That Failed" and "An Orchid". I recorded those first, and later that night I recorded the final song, "Logos". I always write the first and last song of an album first, and then the middle just kind of happens. I've always said I write albums; I don't write random songs and then sort them out.

The most common question I've been asked in interviews is, "How do you decide if a song is for Deerhunter or Atlas Sound?" It's just never an issue because I'm working on one of the projects at a time and I'm the zone of that project. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with this, and I might experiment with it in the future, but I'm not a fan of just random assemblages of songs at the moment. Right now I'm still in the same phase that I've been since you guys have come to know me, which is that I get into a certain headspace for an album.

So the headspace, I guess, and you mentioned the word folk there... I recorded "The Light That Failed" and "An Orchid" at the same time. The next thing on the tape after that is "Logos", and "Logos" specifically is where I realized that there was a heavy, heavy Dylan influence going on. The day I recorded those first two songs, I went to see the Bob Dylan movie [I'm Not There] with a girlfriend and that put me in a Dylan headspace, I guess. When I got home I listened to a bunch of Dylan for an hour or two, smoked a pack of cigarettes, and I recorded "Logos" that night. And I don't really know what I was going for; I don't think anyone would listen to that song and think Dylan-- it's got these, like, dissonant, pitch-shifted bells and synthesizers and stuff.

Pitchfork: Yeah, that's interesting because it doesn't come across like your typical singer-songwriter kind of track.

BC: Yeah, that's a big fear of mine is singer-songwriter-y stuff, especially with these new solo shows I've been doing.

I guess I should start off by saying, full disclosure, all of what I've listened to this year. At the beginning of the year I listened to a lot of Animal Collective-- but I'm friends with those guys and it's a just a real relaxed thing. They're a band I love to listen to and I love to hang out with them and talk to them; they're great people, just good-hearted people. I know so many people think my music is quite influenced by Animal Collective, but honestly I think maybe the factor is that we're both influenced by the same stuff. They also turned me on to older stuff and I've played them a lot of stuff as well; it might just be a shared set of influences from the past. But the only other things I've listened to this year steadily are Dylan and Neil Young.

Pitchfork: What Neil Young records have you been most into?

BC: All of them. I mean, all of them. All of Neil. I bought Archives; I went all out, man. I probably spent $3,000 on Neil Young this year. I became a little bit shocked by how honest his music his and what a good man he makes you want to be, y'know? And there's an American-ness about it that I really love-- even though he's Canadian or whatever-- I think his music captures a lot of that.

Pitchfok: I've had kind of a big fascination with Harvest Moon recently.

____BC: What a beautiful album.

Pitchfork: Yeah, I was out of town for a stretch without much music and had only that record and that Fleet Foxes album to listen to, and sort of fell in love with them at the same time.

BC: Yeah, I think [Fleet Foxes'] Robin Pecknold might be one of the most honest songwriters coming around right now. I guess he's already come around. I've only had brief encounters with him, and he's a super great guy. He told me about this story behind one of his songs-- and it's his story to tell, not mine-- but I was really shocked by how the imagery was suggestive of one thing but was really referring to something else so modern that we can all relate to, which is teenagers in suburbia. His story reminded me of friends I had when I was a kid and I was kind of touched by it. Since then I've tried listening to their music much more in that context-- realizing that it's not a put-on. They're not a put-on; they're the real thing.

Pitchfork: OK, so back to the record.

BC: OK, then there's "Walkabout", but we all know the story of that. Let me think of some interesting things about "Walkabout" that aren't totally understood. I already said in the little press release that the genesis was hearing the sample with the [Animal Collective] guys while we were playing an iPod game on a bus during a European tour.

But Noah [Lennox, aka Panda Bear] sort of taught me how to sample things on a sampler in a way where they would match up to other elements. Then I constructed the song and wrote the lyrics and melody. And Noah, what he did, was just gave it balls. He recorded his vocals and sent it back to me and he just added the life to it. But I did all the music for it; I think there's maybe some confusion over that. I totally understand how people think it sounds like a Panda Bear song that Atlas Sound is guesting on, but I don't think that any of us are really feeling super proprietary about our stuff.

I think Noah has it a lot harder than I do, actually, because there are so many groups that are just really biting his shit, y'know? I hate saying it because I don't want to hurt anybody and I don't want to discourage people from making music because, I mean, if you heard the music I made when I was a kid-- when I was nine or 10 years old and I first got a guitar and a tape recorder-- I was trying to be Nirvana. It sounds like Nirvana; I was really influenced by Hole at that point.

You learn by imitation and the fact is that Noah-- because he's a charismatic and well-tempered individual-- he's mastered his domain and he has his own sound. And that sound has definitely resonated with enough people where people are learning how to play music of their own by imitating his music. Obviously "Walkabout" doesn't really fall into that category, but a funny anecdote about that song is that, when I made it, the first thing I thought was that it reminded me of the song "Steal My Sunshine" by LEN. I love that song.

That's what we were going for-- a summer jam. So while people keep saying it sounds like Atlas Sound is trying to sound like Panda Bear, when I was making it I was actually kind of thinking about LEN-- this Canadian band nobody remembers. I think the younger kids need to realize there's this whole forgotten 90s that people don't really talk about. Like, what was that song, Primitive Radio Gods ["Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand"]? That song's great! But people don't talk about this stuff anymore. They act like nobody before has used samples in an ambient way or cut up a song and layered it with electronic elements.

Pitchfork: Right, it's not like you guys are the first ones to do it.

BC: Absolutely not, it's all imitation. Everything I do is 100% automation, which means I'm just doing it live. You could call it improvising, but that usually tends to be freer, more like your conscious is playing with your unconscious, whereas when I make automatic songs like "Criminals", when I do a song like that, it's totally automatic. A song like "Walkabout", it's totally imitative. The goal of that song was to make people happy, and I've never really made a song to make people happy before. I really genuinely wanted people to listen to that song and have their spirits lifted. I wanted it to be a nice summer jam and I wanted it to be free, just give it away. I was told that was a terrible idea. You know, "Wait until the album's gonna come out and then release it as a single and it'll boost your album sales," and it's just like, fuck that-- fuck it. Just put it out for free and let people have it. It's meant for summer and bring people's spirits up and sort of remember what it feels like to be a kid for a minute.

Then there's something like "Criminals", which is totally different. That was recorded in one night in Deerhunter's new building. It's like a Victorian mansion in Marietta (Ga.) that has a detached carriage house that we use. It's a really interesting building. That's where we chill and everything. I was there one night and I was like, "Damn, I don't have any song ideas." I just happened to pick up this crazy sort of toy thrift store guitar that's on all my records. It's this nylon string plastic guitar that I've been used for writing rhythm guitar chords for a long time because it's so easy to play and chords just sound good on it. I started out with this drum loop that I played and then I recorded an acoustic guitar track over it and mumbled into a microphone. Then I played another drum track over it because I like for there to be some dynamics there, and then I sung the lyrics while I was doing that. I basically carved those lyrics out of whatever was coming out of my mouth.

What it means now to me is that it's really kind of a song for my dad. He's always followed and supported us even through darker, weirder times-- me and the whole Deerhunter gang-- but some of our songs he likes more than others. And he's always said, "When are you just going to sing a song? And y'know, have the words be clear and have a story?" So it's meant to be that, sort of country-western and sort of melancholy, like kind of an existential country song.

Pitchfork: Then there's "Attic Lights", which I think of has kind of a similar feel to "My Halo". Do you think that or no?

BC: Nah, I don't really think that. "Attic Lights" was recorded in my bedroom and a little bit in Notown and that song is about Cole [Alexander] from Black Lips. I realized that after the fact. When I sing subconsciously-- I guess I have a gift for communicating myself better when I try less. That's why I do terrible in interviews, because I try too hard and I come off like a cunt. I mean, this is good now because I'm chilled out; I don't have anything to prove. But anyway, this song is a first take. The lyrics were on the spot. Usually I have to go back, like on "Criminals", I have to go back and re-do the vocals so you can understand them. But with "Attic Lights" you're hearing the chords and the vocals being recorded for the first time. The minute I realized it was about Cole was when I got to the line, "I can still remember the smell."

This is the first time I've ever talked about this album in detail. I'm also feeling really educated now because I've been in bed for two weeks and I've been on the Internet! I know all the hot new artists and where they've been covered.

Pitchfork: Oh yeah? So what do you think of all these young guys, Washed Out and all them?

BC: The chill-glos? What is it called, chill-fi? I know just enough about the ones you're referring to to know that they're not bullshit-- they're not just jumping on a trend. Ducktails, particularly, is kind of my favorite just because the way his music evokes a lot of memories and it also kind of combines a lot of the stuff I miss about stuff like Casino Versus Japan-- some of these older, more obscure electronic artists from the mid-to-late 90s and early 2000s. Pitchfork was never kind to Casino Versus Japan. But I don't get all bitchy when Pitchfork disagrees with my opinion [laughs]. But the fact is, I think this chill-- what is it called?

Pitchfork: Some people were saying chillwave, or glo-fi.

____BC: Nobody picked up on my ambient punk thing.

Pitchfork: People talked about that!

BC: Yeah, but I didn't have, like, legions of followers [laughs]. No, this glo-fi thing is great, seriously. As far as I can tell it's producing interesting music, but these people should also know to challenge themselves to step out of that as soon as they can. I mean, I don't know if you've noticed but most of the people that are pioneering those kinds of things aren't really repeating themselves, y'know? I guess we have Panda-- Mr. Lennox-- to thank for this glo-fi movement. Was my Let the Blind album, was that a glo-fi album?

Pitchfork: No, I don't think so. At least not in the way it's being referred to now. Panda Bear, Saint Etienne, Ariel Pink, Air France, those sorts of bands are mentioned.

BC: Well, fuck them, because I had a song on it called "Ready, Set, Glow" and it was lo-fi!

Pitchfork: That's right! Maybe that was the genesis of glo-fi right there.

BC: That was back when my shit was magenta, now my shit's yellow. All my colors are glowing and lit up now. It's not even glo-fi, it's fucking bright lights-fi!

Pitchfork: I guess since we're already kind of doing it, if you're up for it we can just go through the rest of the songs track by track?

BC: Dude, I'm up for anything. Trust me, this'll be the most human contact I have for the day because I'm still kind of bedridden. I kind of wanted to do something a little bit more comprehensive here because I don't really plan on doing that many interviews. And as a fan of music and as a person who likes to read about music-- I have all those 33 1/3 books and everything-- I like people to know where things come from.

Pitchfork: Perfect, yeah. So then there's "Shelia". It's a total pop song, huh?

BC: "Shelia" is a total pop song. And I'll tell you something about that song. My feeling about "Shelia" was different before I had just this really intense sickness with pneumonia for the past two weeks than it is now. I mean, I haven't really listened to it since I've been sick, but I guess being in bed with that feeling of death-- possible death, possible fatal, y'know, ending of it all. You know, when you have pneumonia there's these moments where you can't breathe, you feel like you're drowning. You think, "I must sleep this away," but you can't sleep because if you fall asleep and no one's around to monitor you... it was really scary. I mean, I'm upbeat now because I'm happy the antibiotics are doing their job, but the past two weeks have been really dark for me. Like, I've been crying and reevaluating stuff. I honestly almost called my lawyer to set up a will, like a trust for my niece and nephew.

And I'm not a crazy hypochondriac. I mean, everybody thinks I'm sick because, "Oh, he's skinny, that must have something to do with it." It's like, no, we all get sick about the same amount. And I smoke. My message to kids! If you get the flu, which is inevitably going to be going around this year: DON'T SMOKE when you have the flu because you will have pneumonia and you will watch death tap at your bedroom window. I'm serious, it's dark shit. Your fucking fingers go numb. There's this feeling of, like, shutting down. My point, I guess, getting back to "Shelia" is that I've been lonely in the past. And lesser so lately because I've just been productive and I'm just more balanced now. I'm not the guy in the dress with the blood and the unrequited gay whatever-- which, according to my psychiatrist, my gayness is a form of narcissism but you'll have to ask him about that.

Pitchfork: Do you identify as gay or bi?

BC: I am asexual. A-sexual. I read somewhere, maybe on Facebook, where somebody said something like, "I heard Bradford was gay, but then I heard he was bi." Then somebody wrote, "No, I heard he was asexual." And then somebody said, "That's bullshit-- he totally hit on my friend after a show." That has never happened. Ever. Never. Not once. Unlike the rest of everyone I hang around with, I don't drink, so I remember what happened after shows. And I have never hit on anyone after a show, I'm not that kind of person. Even if I was attracted to someone, I'd be too shy.

Okay, let's talk about "Shelia" ground up. I was playing a show, the show was not going so hot because the PA system was really quiet and it was in a really huge warehouse space. And people couldn't hear me. So I just said, "Fuck this, I'm gonna do a loud punk song." So I just looped three guitar chords that I just randomly chose, then I added a lead guitar thing on the looping pedal, and then I just went and pulled the floor tom and the snare drum out from the curtain where the former band had put their equipment. And then I just started banging on the drums with maracas-- I think it's on YouTube, that's where that song was written, straight up.

And when I sang the words, they were so unbelievably unconscious, it's like I was singing somebody else's song. So at first I thought, "This is good, I'm writing a love song for boys to sing to girls. It's a heterosexual love song. What could be more experimental than me writing a straight up love song?" Then I thought maybe the last part's a little weird, the "We'll die alone together" part.

I guess, my point is that I realized I had written maybe, I dunno, the first ever asexual love song. Where it's really just about a fear of dying alone-- you need contact, you need love, you need empathy. You need this relationship but if there's no sex involved, people act like it's not a legitimate relationship. In a way the song was really kind of written for my friend Sarah, she and my friend Chrissie have been my best friends since we were very young. And I'd love to spend the rest of my life with Sarah. It's not a romantic thing or a sexual attraction. She's "Shelia".

Pitchfork: So more of a familiar kind of love, then. Like when married couples stop having sex or something.

BC: Yeah exactly, and I've been thinking about that with pneumonia and stuff, with all these death thoughts and everything. You know, I don't have anyone like that, and at times I am very lonely. I don't leave my room, and all I am surrounded by are guitars and equipment, y'know? It's not always the best place to be. But I also like my solitude, and I'm a strong-willed person; I'm a very hard-to-be-around person sometimes, I guess.

Pitchfork: So for "Quick Canal" you got to work with somebody who was one of your idols-- Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab. At what point did you think about Laetitia for it and how did it come together?

BC: I could not write anything for that song to save my ass. I thought it was a great song; all the Deerhunter guys had heard it, and that was the one that got them pumped. So I was like, "I gotta keep this," y'know? I was really into it. But it was really long, and I knew I wanted it to be the centerpiece. I don't really know at what point I thought about it for her. I was on tour with Stereolab, and Laetitia and I were at a deli or something and saying that we had to work together at some point. I was thinking that would mean maybe I would go and help record Monade, go over to France and collaborate with her, do something like that. Then I realized that, hey, I've got this song right now that could really use a good singer to give it what it needs. But yeah it was really easy to arrange, and we have the same manager, so he took care of it all.

Pitchfork: Is it strange at all for you to have something like that come to fruition? To have someone you looked up to working as your peer?

BC: No, I don't think so. Because contrary to popular belief, maybe, I'm a really friendly guy, I guess, and I really like meeting people. And I'm not really super impressed even if you're my hero; I can just rap with you and we can hang. I'm not gonna like sit there and bite my lip and ask questions about certain songs-- okay I might do that once or twice. But it's just, like, two people hanging out. And Laetitia's an incredible woman, a very mature woman who's done a great job raising her child and she's very motherly in a way. She's also full of wisdom, y'know? I didn't really give her much direction or anything because I wanted to know what she would add to it.

Pitchfork: So there's not, like, a fanboy aspect to it?

BC: Yeah, unfortunately it's hard for me to be a fanboy for anything these days just because I see so much music. And it's not a namedropping thing, but there's just not that many people in this certain small little genre world we live in that I don't know or am not acquainted with. And I like them all; I get along with pretty much everyone. It wouldn't be unusual to see a thousand collaborations at some point. I mean, you gotta have friends, and it's really hard to have friends that don't operate on the same schedule as you or do the same kind of things you do, because they don't understand it. And then you realize that your friends-- your real-life friends-- it's not that they become fanboys of you but they become more interested in what you're doing than how you're doing. So I find more and more that, if I want to talk to somebody, I talk to Brian or Dave [from Animal Collective] or people like Karen [O]-- she's a great person to talk to. I mean, it's more like, "How much luggage should I check or how should I pack this equipment differently?" There's just a lot of little things that you learn from each other.

Pitchfork: The next couple of songs on the album seem to almost be part of a suite.

BC: Yeah, the last half of the album, I realized, is all about illness. Especially the last three songs of the album, it's almost like the progression of a disease. I realized this lying in bed sick now in what I thought could have been my deathbed for the last two weeks. "Kid Klimax" is when you wake up with a sore throat, it's the first sign of the symptom, it's sort of like a preview.

And "Washington School" is definitely the fever dream that night. Some of the things I scribbled down as lyrics with that at first were, "burn the sheets," "ripped out," "the sick one faced me." I kind of have a vision of like a boy's school or like a teenage mental institution, and there's an illness going around and there's like a fever party; that's kind of how I envision that song. "Logos" is the full-blown, you're awake now, you have a fever, you realize it's really getting intense, and that middle section of "Logos" with noise, the black hole in the middle where it's just white noise, I wanted that to be the sound of the fever breaking. I didn't really know I was doing it when I made it, but it's exactly like the progression of an illness.

"Logos" is my favorite song I've ever done because there's something about it that I don't understand. You're always as a musician trying to shock yourself or create music that's maybe even too weird for your own taste. In my case it's kind of weird because I started out being known more for ambient things and ambiguous music, but what's experimental for me is the more traditional structure. For me, experimenting involves traditionalism.

Pitchfork: Well, Deerhunter releases at least have gotten progressively poppier since Cryptograms. Do you think you'll continue along that path or want to take a turn back towards the experimental?

BC: I have two answers for that: Abso-fucking-lutely and I have no idea. I want to build an audience that's willing to follow us in whichever direction we might choose.